The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 299 



came it. Nowhere else on the continent has so 

 sharply defined and distinctively American a type 

 been produced as on the frontier, and a single 

 generation has always been more than enough for 

 its production. The influence of the wild country 

 upon the man is almost as great as the effect of 

 the man upon the country. The frontiersman de 

 stroys the wilderness, and yet its destruction means 

 his own. He passes away before the coming of 

 the very civilization whose advance guard he has 

 been. Nevertheless, much of his blood remains, 

 and his striking characteristics have great weight 

 in shaping the development of the land. The vary 

 ing peculiarities of the different groups of men who 

 have pushed the frontier westward at different 

 times and places remain stamped with greater or . 

 less clearness on the people of the communities that 

 grow up in the frontier's stead. 5 



In Kentucky, as in Tennessee and the western 

 portions of the seaboard States, and as later in the 

 great West, different types of settlers appeared suc 

 cessively on the frontier. The hunter or trapper 

 came first. Sometimes he combined with hunting 

 and trapping the functions of an Indian trader, but 

 ordinarily the American, as distinguished from the 

 French or Spanish frontiersman, treated the Indian 

 trade as something purely secondary to his more 

 regular pursuits. In Kentucky and Tennessee the 



5 Frederick Jackson Turner: "The Significance of the 

 Frontier in American History." A suggestive pamphlet, 

 published by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. 



